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7Deliberative Politics: A Procedural Concept ofDemocracyThe question about the conditions of a legitimating genesis of law ·has turned the spotlight on legislative politics, which is one part ofthe broad spectrum of political processes. Taking the perspectiveoflegal theory, I have described legislative politics as a process thatincludes several different forms of argumentation as well as bargaining.In the demanding conditions of fair procedure and thepresuppositions of communication that undergird legitimate lawmaking,the reason that posits and tests norms has assumed aprocedural form. At present it is unclear how this proceduralconcept, so freighted with idealizations, can link up with empiricalinvestigations that conceive politics primarily as an arena of powerprocesses. Such investigations analyze the political sphere in termsof strategic interactions governed by interests or in terms ofsystemic functioning. As I understand it, this question does notimply an opposition between the ideal and the real, for the normativecontent I initially set forth for reconstructive purposes ispartially inscribed in the social facticity of observable politicalprocesses. A reconstructive sociology of democracy must thereforechoose its basic concepts in such a way that it can identifY particlesand fragments of an "existing reason" already incorporated inpolitical practices, however distorted these may be. This approachdoes not need a philosophy of history to support it. It is premisedsimply on the idea that one cannot adequately describe the operationof a constitutionally organized political system, even at an